Authorities finally wake up to dwindling population of tigers in India

Authorities finally wake up to dwindling population of tigers in India

With news of killings pouring in from across the country, authorities wake up to the fact that the population of the tigers is dwindling at the rate of one a day.

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VIJAY JUNG THAPA

December 29, 1997

ISSUE DATE: December 29, 1997

UPDATED: May 22, 2013 10:45 IST

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For almost a decade, activists have been screaming themselves blue about how tiger extinction is staring us in the face: "By 2000, the tiger will be extinct."

Right through, Environment Ministry officials have worn a wry expression, scoffing at the foreboding, calling the activists alarmists. But finally, even they have been struck numb by the mayhem in the forests.

Today, reports pour in of unprecedented killings of tigers by poison, bullets, explosives and traps. This year alone (until December 15) accounts for a shocking official toll of 63. And the healthy census figure of 4,334 in 1989 has now dwindled dangerously to below 3,000.

Even the director of Project Tiger, P.K. Sen, the man responsible for monitoring tigers all over the country, candidly admits to "facing a big crisis". Nobody contradicts the fact that India could easily be losing a tiger a day.

In India's largest wildlife sanctuary - Rajiv Tiger Reserve in Andhra Pradesh - 16 tigers are reported to have been poisoned over the last two years, making the 1989 population of 94 plummet to 25 today. This makes it the most extensive killing of tigers anywhere in the world.

A month ago, in Bhadra Sanctuary in Karnataka, a tiger reportedly exploded after eating "bait". Around the same time, in Taroba Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra, a tiger was found shot dead. In October, another was found poisoned in Dudhwa National Park.

A few months earlier, a gang of poachers was caught in Nagarhole National Park with a tiger skull, bones, claws and whiskers. Why is this happening? Most conservationists say that increasing battles for space between the tiger and man - coupled with the huge demand (an
estimated one billion potential customers, mostly in China) for tiger
parts - have led to the situation in many tiger habitats going
completely out of control.

Says S. Deb Roy, former additional inspector general of forests: "We are probably losing tigers much faster than we anticipated." Everybody
knew the problems of trying to save a predator that has turned prey.

Its home is slowly being eaten away by a sea of human termites, its prey
replaced by cattle and goats, its bones sold to medicinemen of the Far
East. But today, worst-case scenarios are coming true. A Wildlife Institute of India study in Panna Tiger Reserve, after the radio-collaring of a
tiger and a tigress, gives an inside picture of what this magnificent
beast has been reduced to.

The male tiger now moves around a home range of 250 sq km (it was 100 sq km earlier) because of constant human disturbance, never really feeling safe.

Both tigers were found to feed largely on domestic cattle (about 57 per cent of their kills). To procreate and rear cubs in such a disturbed habitat becomes a real challenge.

But the bigger challenge is to try and halt the slide towards extinction. As Sen points out: "We get stuck in our problems."

The indicators are dismal: a minuscule 0.2 per cent of the GDP (roughly Rs 200 crore) is spent on wildlife. Most tiger reserves don't get their allocated money in time - leading to low morale.

There is 40 per cent vacancy in the staff of tiger reserves. About half of the 23 tiger reserves (Valmiki, Manas, Indravati, Nagarjuna Srisailam) face problems of insurgency and law and order.

The poacher/insurgent comes to the tiger reserve armed to the teeth. In sharp contrast, the motley group of forest guards still wield lathis. Worse, they don't even get proper shoes, uniforms or flashlights.

Yet, they are expected to patrol areas ranging from 12 sq km to 20 sq km day in and day out; and every tiger shot or tree felled is their responsibility.

In the end, most tiger reserves today give out census figures that are fudged, showing a marginal rise in the tiger population within protected areas and a sharp increase in killings outside the reserves.

Ironically, the recent spurt in killings comes at a time when the political will to save the tiger finally seems to be firming up. In today's roller-coaster world of politics, the fact that 320 MPs, cutting across party lines, recently sent a petition to the prime minister to save the tiger is a minor miracle.

Conservationists say that since Rajiv Gandhi, I.K. Gujral is the only prime minister to have personally chaired meets on tiger conservation, calling it his "highest priority".

It is then perhaps a sign of the times that nothing still gets done. Conservation, everybody agrees, has a new set of rules today, with protection as the bottom line.

Yet, typically, the urgent need to set up a Wildlife Trade Cell (on the lines of, say, the Narcotics Control Bureau) is agreed to in principle but not implemented because of lack of funds.

More important, the Planning Commission is still sitting on an Environment Ministry proposal that addresses the need to change strategies in the conservation movement. For this, the ministry had, a few months ago, prepared a proposal asking for a phenomenal Rs 2,400 crore in the Ninth Plan.

This proposal, like a huge wand, envisages changing the moribund tiger reserves into smooth, well-functioning sanctuaries with crack strike forces armed with weapons and wireless sets, all atop shining, new diesel jeeps.

It calls for other major changes as well - relocating villages out of protected areas, providing forest guards with security and introducing a legal-support system which will allow field directors to appoint their own lawyers to ensure poachers don't get away scot-free.

"If this comes through, it will change everything," says Sen. But, as usual, the bureaucracy moves to its own slow, monotonous beat, ignoring the fact that a day gone by means another tiger dead.

And so, everyone waits as the Chinese year of the tiger approaches. As does the tiger. Will the new-found political will ensure the proposal is passed and galvanise the wildlife wing of the Environment Ministry into following up the prime minister's interest?

As tiger activist Valmik Thapar puts it: "If we win our battles today, it will only mean 400 or 500 tigers in the next millennium."

And if they fail, it simply means that by the next Chinese year of the tiger, 2010, the big cat would have crossed the bridge into extinction ...

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